Start Small Farms is built around one idea: you don't need the whole thing figured out to begin. You need one small, real first step.
We make things by hand, teach what we know, put together gift boxes we'd actually want to receive, and we're looking for a piece of land in Pennsylvania to do all of it on properly. The farm part is literal eventually, but the things we're growing are business ideas, creative projects, workshops, and people.
We're writing the whole build down as it happens, including the parts that aren't solved. That's the Journal.
Niki
Creative Director. Niki is the creative engine. She's a fine artist with a deep, almost unfair range of craft skills, a designer, an event planner who can run a whole event start to finish, and a Montessori teacher who spends her summers running camps and the rest of the year teaching art out of her home studio.
If Start Small Farms makes something by hand, odds are Niki either made it or worked out how. Traditional 2D art, uber-realistic felted wool animals, hand sculpted clay, custom book nooks built from things found outside, live plant and cut flower arrangements, furniture refinishing. The list goes on and on.
She holds a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania and is Montessori Certified. Her one rule: full honesty, always. Tell her if something isn't working.
Jason
Finance and tech, and the residency champion. Jason is Kim's husband and her business partner of nearly twenty years. They started Stranger Studios together in 2006 and launched Paid Memberships Pro in 2011. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Haverford College with a Creative Writing minor from Bryn Mawr, which tells you most of what you need to know about him.
His thesis: almost nobody gets to be creative day to day, and most artists he knows can't work out how to make a living from what they make. He wants creativity to be a real, sustainable path rather than the thing you squeeze in after the real work is done. He's ready to teach the money side of that.
He's the one pushing hardest for artist residencies, and we use "artist" loosely. Writers, musicians, painters, tech founders, all of it.
Kim
The glue. Kim is endlessly full of ideas and wants to learn how to do everything, which is either a superpower or a curse depending on the day. She runs the website and the socials, and has a pile of skills she's excited to teach.
Mostly she wants to work with her hands, make things, and make small moments a tiny bit better for the people around her.
She holds a BS in Business Administration from Villanova University with a concentration in Entrepreneurship, and has been putting it to work ever since. Start Small Farms is the creative, human, offline counterweight to two decades spent behind a screen. Same person, very different muscles.
How we fit
Niki makes and runs. Jason keeps us honest with the numbers and the tech, and reminds us this isn't about profit so much as the intangibles. Kim glues it together and chips in everywhere the other two will have her.
None of us has the whole thing figured out, which is sort of the point. We're not launching a finished company. We're taking one small, real first step, then the next one, and writing it all down as we go.
We're glad you're here.